The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon: A Novel (1991)

Daring and provocative. Love that about this book. Also slow and uneven in parts.
( )

“If you’re the devil, then it’s not me telling this story.” is the first line of this novel. The author’s credo is to write dangerously. The book’s contents are full of brutality, beauty, death and life. This is a unique novel; I’ve never read anything like it, but hope I can find others by Spanbauer that will be just as good. Dense, rich, and vivid is the story of stories, the human-being tellings. Dazzling is probably the best adjective to describe it since my mind feels like it’s looked directly at the sun while I’m reading about the moon.

The narrator is Shed, or Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed berdache who makes his living at the Indian Head Hotel in the little turn-of-the-20th-century town of Excellent, Idaho and pursues killdeer, the concept of staying hidden and secret.

Love and acceptance, the freedom to be who you are is what Ida Richelieu, the hotel madam who wears blue when she ovulates, believes in. “Oh, the humanity,” is one of her favorite sayings and one that encompasses what this book is about.

Shed believes Dellwood Barker is his father. He isn’t, but he is a philosopher. He teaches Shed that, "Smoke and wind and fire are all things you can feel but can't touch. Memories and dreams are like that too. They're what this world is made up of. There's really only a very short time that we get hair and teeth and put on red cloth and have bones and skin and look out eyes. Not for long. Some folks longer than others. If you're lucky, you'll get to be the one who tells the story: how the eyes have seen, the hair has blown, the caress the skin has felt, how the bones have ached. What the human heart is like. How the devil called and we did not answer. How we answered."

Spanbauer has created a tale that exposes intolerance set against a pansexual West, unknown to Hollywood depictions. It is a novel in which the characters (and the reader) are entangled in a struggle to find out the answer to the questions of what makes family, are there limits to love, and how does one set the self – after it’s been identified – free. Freedom is what the devil would deny us and this is a book that does battle with the devil. ( )

""A different view of the West where the bisexuals and prostitutes wear the white hats, gender is up for grabs, and every permutation of love will have its way." --Kirkus Reviews ( )

Oh, how I wanted to love this book. I truly did.

Over the years, it’s been highly recommended to me by writers whose work I admire and readers whose taste I trust. It has garnered glowing reviews from the NY Times, Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly and New York magazine, among many other well respected publications.

I almost feel badly about just how much I don’t like it.

I’ll start with what’s good. The writing is carefully composed and stylish. The narrative voice is distinctive. And the protagonists are all depicted as fairly fascinating and singular individuals. Plus there’s an element of mystery that kept me mildly absorbed until the end.

Unfortunately however, author Tom Spanbauer falls victim to many of the tropes of contemporary gay fiction and film. The book was published in 1991, suggesting that it was probably written in the late 1980’s, during the height of the Reagan presidency which gave rise to gay rage over the influence of the Christian right and the GOP’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the AIDS crisis. I am all too familiar with the sub-genre of "transgressional" LGBT books/movies, including Greg Araki’s The Living End and James Robert Baker’s Tim and Pete, that depict angry gay men exacting revenge on conservatives, homophobes and haters of all stripes. Despite the fact that Spanbauer’s novel takes a different route, I can see the hallmarks of that same frustration on every page.

Nothing impedes my enjoyment of a story more than when I clearly detect the proselytizing voice of the author. If I’m reading your novel, it’s likely I’m already gay-friendly; I don’t need a sermon. The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon is peppered with all the stereotypical messages that one can find anywhere from Glee to Latter Days to Lady Gaga videos - your family is something you choose, racism and homophobia are bad, free love is good, etc. Nothing wrong with any of these sentiments, it’s just that Spanbauer is way too obvious about it and in short order it becomes pretty tiresome.

He throws in everything (and everyone) but the kitchen sink in an effort to prove his inclusiveness. Every ethnicity, disability and gender preference is represented - a Jewish brothel owner, her lesbian lover, impoverished Native Americans, a traveling troupe of black minstrels (one of whom is a blind eunuch), an incestuous bisexual cowboy, an autistic mute, plus a handful of beleaguered beasts. And, to illustrate their acceptance of one another’s differences, just about everyone beds down with everyone else at some point or another. It all just kind of stretched the bounds of plausibility. Not to mention the bizarre suggestion that sexual energy is all powerful and healing, so the creepy remedy for someone who’s dying of gangrene is to get naked and dry hump them. Only a man could think this stuff up. Honestly.

And don’t even get me started on the villains! All the usual suspects - an overfed, latently homosexual sheriff, corrupt politicians, a big businessman intent on despoiling the environment for personal gain and, of course, judgmental [and presumably, sexually repressed] Mormons. No complexity. Just a bunch of cartoonish Snively Whiplash types.

All in all, I found the book to be overly simplistic, completely lacking in subtlety and downright preachy. ( )

What the blurbs say: 'wise and wonderful'; 'imaginative scope'; 'so startlingly original and true that it redeems everything'.

What the book actually contains: rape. Murder. Mutilation. Prejudice. More rape. Actually, pretty much anything unspeakable you can think of - it'll be in there somewhere.

Life is vile enough. I don't need my literature to mirror it. To Oxfam it goes! ( )